Gallup: More identify with Democrats

More Americans identified with the Democrats than with the GOP in 2012, a new survey says.

According to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday, 47 percent of those surveyed last year identified either as Democrats or as Democratic-leaning independents, while 42 percent called themselves Republican or leaned toward the GOP. In 2010 and 2011, the parties ran neck and neck when it came to party affiliation.

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“The percentages of Republican and Democratic identifiers were essentially unchanged from 2011 to 2012,” the Gallup report explained. “The new Democratic advantage is mostly due to an increased proportion of Democratic-leaning independents and a decreased proportion of Republican-leaning independents.”

Gallup also noted that “2012 marked the sixth consecutive year that less than 30% of Americans identified as Republicans,” and that the year as a whole was in “the lower range for the past 25 years” for the “percentage of core Democrats and Republicans.”

The poll is the result of “an aggregate of all 2012 Gallup and USA Today/Gallup polls, consisting of more than 20,000 interviews.”

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In U.S., Nearly Half Identify as Economically Conservative Thirty-eight percent say they are conservative on social issues

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as conservative rather than liberal on economic issues, 46% to 20%. The gap is narrower on social issues, but conservatives still outnumber liberals, 38% to 28%.

These results are based on Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 3-6. Since 2001, the poll has asked Americans to say whether they are liberal, moderate, or conservative on "economic" and, separately, "social" issues. The interpretation of what qualifies as social or economic issues is left to the respondent, given that the question does not define or provide examples of these types of issues.

In the same poll, on Gallup's standard measure of ideology -- not asked in reference to any set of issues -- 41% identified themselves as conservatives, 33% as moderates, and 23% as liberals. Those figures are similar to what Gallup typically finds when it asks people to identify their ideology.